Indo-US military-to-military cooperation has emerged as the one truly
outstanding success story of bilateral ties in the past two-three years?
Why is the Pentagon so India-friendly? Is it because of our commitment
to democracy and diversity? We would like to think it so but that is
not the reason. Is it because of our economic performance and potential?
Could be, but only to a very limited extent. The underlying rationale
for India looming large on the Pentagon radar screen is China. American
conservatives see India as a crucial ally in US policy of China-containment,
a sentiment that echoes favourably among large sections of the Indian
ruling elite as well. In some senses, there is nothing new in this approach.
After all, in the early 1950s, massive American aid to India found many
advocates in Washington so as to push democratic India ahead of Communist
China. Now, the motivation is not economic-barring a few areas like
software exports, China is far ahead of India. China has also integrated
itself far closer than India into the US economy-the volume of bilateral
Sino-US trade is, for instance, is over six times that of Indo-US trade,
both merchandise and services. Instead, geopolitics is the new driving
force.

A few days back, the US Secretary of Defence received a classified 130-page
document prepared by his analysts called Indo-US Military Relationship:
Expectations and Perceptions. This report has been made available to
the influential Jane’s Foreign Report which carried excerpts very recently.
The analysis is based largely on interviews with 82 senior Indian and
American officials, 50 of whom are military officers, both retired and
on active duty. The conclusion is blunt: “China represents the most
significant threat to both countries’ security in the future as an economic
and military competitor. One US officer is quoted as saying: “We want
a friend in 2020 that will be capable of assisting the US militarily
to deal with a Chinese threat”. Indian sources are quoted as having
pointed to the reality of China supplying nuclear and missile technology
to Pakistan, weapons to Bangladesh, making deep inroads into Myanmar,
building the deep-water Gwadar port in Baluchistan and resuming the
supply of arms to various insurgent groups in the northeast.

The Pentagon report comes close on the heels of John Garver’s The China-
India-US Triangle: Strategic Relations in the Post-Cold War Era that
was published some six months back by the Seattle-based National Bureau
of Asian Research. Garver who teaches at Atlanta’s Georgia Institute
of Technology is America’s foremost academic on India-China in a comparative
strategic perspective. Two years ago, his book Protracted Contest: Sino-Indian
Rivalry in the 20th Century, a work of meticulous analysis and formidable
scholarship. Garver’s belief is that India and China share a fundamentally
antagonistic and competitive relationship in which conflict is inherent.
According to him, ” Rather than allowing the new Sino-Indian-U.S. triangle
to evolve toward an ever-shifting, flexible, three-cornered minuet,
continuation of Beijing’s abrasive policies of the 1990s may well move
the new triangle in the direction of a fairly stable combination of
India and the United States against China”. Forging a new India-US relationship
will, he says, “have triangular consequences regardless of U.S. intentions”.

There are many in this country who will undoubtedly welcome a Washington-New
Delhi informal axis to “spook and unsettle” Beijing, if not create “shock
and awe”. But thanks largely to the pragmatism of Chinese leaders who
suggested that the boundary dispute be set aside to foster an economic
relationship, there has been dramatic upsurge in commercial links between
India and China. During January-December 2002, two-way trade amounted
to $ 4.9 billion. If Taiwan and Hong Kong are also included, this figure
is close to $ 9 billion, not all that critical for “Greater” China no
doubt, but almost a tenth of India’s international trade volume. China’s
entry into the WTO is opening numerous market opportunities for India.
Now that the bogey of Chinese goods swamping India has been buried,
Indian companies are shedding their diffidence and fear. Companies like
Ranbaxy, Tisco, SAIL, Bharat Forge, JK Tyres, NIIT, Essel Packaging
and TCS already have a growing presence in Chinese markets and TCS is
on the final shortlist of three for the prestigious computerisation
of the Shanghai stock exchange. Other firms like Sundram Fasteners,
Apollo Tyres, Samtel, Asian Paints and Infosys will soon make their
presence felt. Our foreign office is, no doubt, wary of China and in
January 2003 Mr. Jaswant Singh set diplomacy aside and pooh-poohed Chinese
statistics. The Chinese feel that India is being unnecessarily obstructive
in the matter of granting business visas and in approving Chinese FDI
and contracts won in public tenders. The Chinese networking major Huawei
Technologies has a sizeable presence in Bangalore and wants to expand,
much to the discomfiture of Indian security agencies.

There is simply no substitute for dialogue between the two Himalayan
neighbours tied together by their common legacies spawned by Buddhism.
This interaction has to be sustained at a variety of levels-political,
military, academic, media, sports, culture, etc. Sub-regional cooperation
involving, for example, India’s northeast, Bangladesh, Myanmar and China’s
Yunnan Province has great potential-but while others are keen, official
Delhi is suspicious. To be sure, we have differences on a whole host
of regional issues. A permanent boundary agreement, that must necessarily
involve both India and China giving up territory, is a distant prospect.
China’s ties with Pakistan have a logic, disturbing as it may be, of
their own that we are unable to appreciate. India cannot dilute its
relationship with the Dalai Lama, just as it encourages a direct Sino-Tibetan
dialogue and as it hopes that eventually he would return to Tibet to
a life of dignity, safety and freedom. Even so, we cannot allow ourselves
to be mesmerised by the Americans and their encomiums to us in the hope
that we will be an ally in their China policy that has a definite adversarial
basis. We must continue to engage the US intensively and extensively-and
in this, we have to learn much from China. But this should not be at
the cost of a deeper relationship with China. Without being romantic,
we can still be realistic. As a nation, we have to invest more in creating
the intellectual capital to understand and deal with China more effectively.
India’s acquiring “big power” status on the world stage depends critically
on this, apart from making peace with Pakistan-and the two are not unrelated.